The Lesser Bohemians: A Novel
2016 Staff Favorite
In her second novel Eimar McBride remains committed to the manipulation of language and strives to, as she puts it, "make language cope with and more fully describe that part of life that is destroyed once it begins to get put into straightforward grammatical language." McBride has found a way to jam the bodies into the speech. Hardly a page is untouched by the linguistic fallout of violence, sex and grief. McBride marks experiences as those which bring language to a shuddering stop. That halting of speech is seen, heard and felt in The Lesser Bohemians with the use of unfilled spaces between words, blank as a way of registering what can barely be spoken. -Annie
Shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize & the 2016 Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year
Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year The breathtaking new novel from Eimear McBride, about an extraordinary, all-consuming love affair Eimear McBride's debut novel A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING was published in 2013 to an avalanche of praise: nominated for a host of literary awards, winner of the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Goldsmith's Prize, declared by Vanity Fair to be "One of the most groundbreaking pieces of literature to come from Ireland, or anywhere, in recent years," McBride's bold, wholly original prose immediately established her as a literary force. Now, she brings her singular voice to an unlikely love story. One night an eighteen-year-old Irish girl, recently arrived in London to attend drama school, meets an older man - a well-regarded actor in his own right. While she is naive and thrilled by life in the big city, he is haunted by more than a few demons, and the clamorous relationship that ensues risks undoing them both. A captivating story of passion and innocence, joy and discovery set against the vibrant atmosphere of 1990s London over the course of a single year, THE LESSER BOHEMIANS glows with the eddies and anxieties of growing up, and the transformative intensity of a powerful new love.